3DS Max 2018 mental ray removed

[stephen.d.green]

Not entirely unexpected after it was removed from Maya, but confirmed on nvidia's page that Autodesk have decided to no longer bundle mental ray with Max 2018.

http://images.nvidia.com/content/technologies/advanced-rendering/pdf/354915-MentalRay-FAQ-Sheet-FNL-...

If you want it, you have to rent it from nvidia.

[spacefrog_]

Free Network rendering with Arnold and MR is gone with Max 2018. Same is true for the batch render/commandline  option . They will produce a watermark ( Arnold ), don't know  whether the MR solution will refuse to render at all or produce watermarked renders

It's of no use to put lipstick on a pig, it still remains a pig ...

BTW: the 3ds Max Stereo Camera ( downloadable via Autodesk Exchange ), requires batch rendering to explicitly render the left/right eye. Rendering from the Max session always render the middle  camera only. So we loose that functionality too. Until now i haven't heard that anybody at AD would be aware about that, so i bet no solution/fix for this willl be available at Max 2018 launch ( most certainly the stereo camera will not be available for a long time) .

Of course i would be happy to be proven wrong

Here's the official Autodesk article

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/3ds-max/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/Change...

[jcdeblok]

It's in the faq. This is really the deal we're getting.

[kaijurgen]

From the pdf linked at the top of this thread:

Q: How much will Mental Ray for 3ds Max cost? A:  Final pricing and packaging will be announced closer to availability. Please see what we did for Mental Ray for Maya, as it is influencing what we do for 3ds Max

The prices for Mental Ray for Maya:

$295/year per machine $995/year for 5 machines Special pricing for systems with an NVIDIA Professional GPU (Quadro or Tesla) $95/year per machine $325/year for 5 machines - See more at: http://www.nvidia.com/object/nvidia-mental-ray-products.html#sthash.zpDWXrvO.dpuf

[companioncube]

@kaijurgen maybe look at other options. this is just a sign of the times. you can't really be mad at autodesk. 

example corona pricing
€24.99 Monthly Corona Renderer - FairSaaS - 1 WS + 3 NODES (1 month)
€29.99 Monthly Corona Renderer - FairSaaS - 1 WS + 5 NODES (1 month)
€44.99 Monthly Corona Renderer - FairSaaS - 1 WS + 10 NODES (1 month)

€289.99 Yearly Corona Renderer - FairSaaS - 1 WS + 3 NODES (12 months)
€349.99 Yearly Corona Renderer - FairSaaS - 1 WS + 5 NODES (12 months)
€529.99 Yearly Corona Renderer - FairSaaS - 1 WS + 10 NODES (12 months)

[kaijurgen]

It's just a bit of a roller coaster ride don't you think? I was really looking forward to using Arnold but if I want to continue to use my render farm I have to seriously consider sticking with max 2017.

[wool_]

Does anybody, maybe  @faline.farwell, know if Arnold in Max2018 will offer Render-To-Texture ?

[spacefrog_]

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@wool_ wrote:

Does anybody, maybe  @faline.custodio.da.silva, know if Arnold in Max2018 will offer Render-To-Texture ?

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It does not ( yet ? )

[dominique.bouthillette]

@Isaac_Zuniga I'm always pleased to help, Mental Ray or not. =P

[wool_]

Thank you Spacefrog...I feared that 

[Isaac_Zuniga]

I was looking forward to 3ds Max 2018, because 3ds Max 2017 was quite an unstable mess for me, but now I'm hearing this about the next version, it makes me wonder if the lack of a powerful render engine can be justified by Autodesk by other possible and unknown features that 3ds Max 2018 may or may not have...

I don't know about you guys, but I may just use 3ds Max 2018 to do everything but rendering. I'm probably just going to install 3ds Max 2016 and 2018 side-by-side so I can use Mental Ray from 3ds Max 2016.

Autodesk, I know there are people who like to complain just to complain, I'll admit that I used to be one of those people, but please do heed a little request the consumers would like:

"Please create a new, biased, integrated render engine for 3ds Max in the future (like you did for 3ds Max 2017 with the ART renderer), that can "replace" Mental Ray!"

I'm a student, I don't have $1,000 of pocket change right now to buy Vray or Arnold for all my machines...

[dgorsman]

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IsaacNorman wrote:

I'm a student, I don't have $1,000 of pocket change right now to buy Vray or Arnold for all my machines...

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Who says you have to buy licenses?  First order of business check for educational licenses on both.  Unless you're using them in a for-profit manner, of course.

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IsaacNorman wrote:

"Please create a new, biased, integrated render engine for 3ds Max in the future (like you did for 3ds Max 2017 with the ART renderer), that can "replace" Mental Ray!"

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Is that all? 

[Ihno]

Arnold is a good render engine I think, (it won an oscar lately). And I suppose, if you only know MR, it will blow you away.
I further think that the price for the rendernode licenses is relatively fair.
Having that said, I find it a bit unfair not to have a version of both at the same time for at least one jear.

[Isaac_Zuniga]

You got a better idea man?

I was perfectly happy with Mental Ray. But it seems I'll have to pay $1,000 to get it back...

[spacefrog_]

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@Anonymous wrote:

You got a better idea man?

I was perfectly happy with Mental Ray. But it seems I'll have to pay $1,000 to get it back...

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No , you don't as far i see it - Nvidia will make a version available that renders without additional cost from the 3ds Max session. Only network rendering, commandline rendering and satellite rendering ( distributing bucket rendering across several render nodes) will cost a license. AFAIK the mental ray render nodes are priced at far more sane levels than the Arnold render nodes ( which are totally inflexible and unfair, ATM you require a full blown Arnold license even for dump render slaves/nodes only)

[Isaac_Zuniga]

I wish that sounded like good news to me, but I need more than just one machine to render the stuff I do. I used my workstations in the past to render everything I had, now I'm being told that I have to pay $1,000 to use them again...

More of a reason to pair 3ds Max 2018 with 2016...

[kaijurgen]

I would like to think that the ART renderer could be an option going forward. I just checked Itoo's website and they do not yet support ART. It is essential for me to have an unlimited rendering farm to use with max and forest pro. From an Itoo post dated may 2016: "Technical documentation about ART is very sparse actually, not enough for the implementation we need. I hope it can be done in the future, once Autodesk releases more information and code samples."

Autodesk, can you please work with Itoo to solve these problems?

[joao.a.tavares]

Hello,

Posted this on another thread before, but maybe this is the right one.

So, i only have 1 PC, that i use for all my 3ds max work.

My renderer of choice has been iray, along with some scenes done with mental ray.

Since i only have this one PC, i tend to do the modeling, texturing, setting up the lighting, etc. for several jobs, then queue them up in backburner to render during the "off" hours.

From what i understand, with the removal of Mental Ray and Iray from 3ds Max 2018, i still can get them for free(??) from Nvidia, but i'll be limited to rendering from the 3ds max session alone. Is that right?

If that's the case, then it will severely impact my working schedule, since i won't be able to efficiently queue several jobs to render during the night (for ex.).

So, on top of increasing maintenance costs, we're getting reduced features.

I know, i know...new Arnold renderer, that i'm totally unfamiliar with, or pay nvidia for a mental ray license. Again, more costs, less features.

Also, from what i read before, can't use backburner with Arnold renderer, since it'll watermark the images.

So...how am i supposed to batch render several jobs, on my one and only 3ds max machine, unattended?

Thanks

[jcdeblok]

You can easily script around it, more on that later 🙂 but until then have a look at deadline, which is free for up to 2 machines. It has option to use the GUI version of Max instead of the normal renderslave version. So if your machine can open max it can be used to do a series of render jobs using deadline.

[a.zwegers]

So that is it... no 2018 for me.

I'll stick with 2017 - and I'll have to make sure I keep a copy around indefinitely or I cannot ever go back to projects for a re-render.

I don't care about Arnold or whatever, when I load a scene and press render I expect, I need, I require, I paid (or at least companies did) for EXACTLY THE SAME RESULT as the previous time I pressed render.

So, thanks for this crap... now I've spent an entire day on nada: first 2017 would not import 2018 ACM geometry (from exactly the same "collection"... what great workflow)... so I had to get 2018... and now that appears to be completely worthless.

[eric.winter]

I just downloaded and installed Max 2018 on a trial basis, since neither Windows nor Autodesk seem bothered to ever definitively fix the "Error 10016" issue with 3ds Max 2017 in Windows 10. So far, so bad...

I use 3ds Max to model architectural interiors for import into Unity, and I can't do what I need to without baking my textures in 3ds. Arnold, which from the promotional materials appears to do a very underwhelming job of rendering arch interiors, does not bake textures. I therefore went ahead and downloaded the Mental Ray renderer for 3ds Max from Nvidia. Here's what I've found so far. 

• Mental Ray is free for single frame renders, and rendering to texture. It costs $295 for standalone and animation rendering, though you can get it for $95 if you have certain models of Nvidia's GPU products. 
• 3ds Max is really unstable, far worse than 2017, and with Mental Ray, I've yet to render a texture without it crashing. And I'm not talking about 8096x8096 bakes of highly complex objects. I'm talking about test renders of 256x256 for empty rooms. I'm currently going through all the dozens of settings for the renderer, to hopefully find one that won't crash. Given that I just wasted a day and a half dealing with Error 10016, this is a very unpleasant surprise. 
• Opening 2017 files with Mental Ray elements, such as lights, environments, materials, etc... launches a file conversion tool that tries to strip all that stuff out and replace it with junk from their built-in renderers, even though I have Mental Ray installed. I don't know if this contributes to the stability issues, but I really don't want to waste another day researching and testing it. 

Otherwise, everything's just peachy!

So, I'm looking at the last three days of swimming through the Windows/Autodesk swamp when I was supposed to be wrapping up the coding on V1.0 of my app, and I'm honestly wondering if 3ds Max is worth the trouble. I just model interiors, and the occasional building, for import into Unity as Fbx's with baked textures--nothing fancy. So, do I want to pay $1,500/yr for the genius, yet deeply troubled child that 3ds has become; Or do I want to jump over to Blender with either Vray or Mental Ray, for no more than $300? I'm not a huge fan of Blender, but it's free, and it's never, ever crashed on me; and architectural rendering is mostly about the quality of lighting and materials.